Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

Grelle made a very rude, two-fingered gesture behind his trouser-leg and remained standing, saying nothing. He had not yet been asked a question and he was damned if he was going to play Danchin's game, to start babbling on, explaining himself.

The silence lasted a minute.

`Well,' Danchin said sharply. 'What happened?'

`I saw David Nash… Grelle, well prepared for the query, spoke in a monotone, almost in a bored tone. 'He had come over to try and find out why Florian is making more and more anti-American speeches. Apparently the State Department is getting very worried about it. I fenced with him, told him I knew nothing about politics, that I was a policeman. He didn't seem very satisfied with my reply, so I thought it best to leave, which I did.'

`Mm-m…' The stooped figure turned away from the window and suddenly stood quite erect. It gave Grelle a slight shock; he could never remember seeing Danchin perfectly erect. 'I think you handled the situation well. What do you think Lasalle is up to now? I had your memo this morning.'

Again the disconcerting switch to an unexpected topic, a typical tactic of Danchin's to catch the man he was interviewing off guard. Grelle shrugged his shoulders, aware that his casual dress of slacks and polo-necked sweater was being studied with disapproval. 'I'm as puzzled as you are, Minister, about Lasalle,' he replied. 'I've alerted the frontier people about the Englishman, but we may have to wait for Hugon's next report before we learn more.'

`Probably, probably… Danchin wandered round the room and then stopped behind Grelle. 'Do you think there is any chance that Lasalle is in touch with the Americans?' he inquired suddenly.

Grelle swung round and stared at his interrogator. 'So far I have no evidence to suggest that. Are you saying that you have? Because if so I should know of it…'

`Just thinking aloud, Grelle. Not even thinking-just wondering. I don't think I need detain you any longer…'

On his way back to the prefecture Grelle went into a bar behind the rue St Honore to calm down. Does everyone hate his boss? he wondered, as he got back into his car and drove to the Ile de la Cite. The news Boisseau gave him made him forget the irritation of the trip to the Place Beauvau.

`They've spotted Lennox…'

Boisseau came into the prefect's office holding a piece of paper. 'They checked his passport at the nearest border control point to Saarbrucken. He was travelling alone in a blue DS -registration number BL 49120. It all fits with the data Hugon gave us. The passport simply designates him as business executive.'

`Quick work. Have they put someone on his tail?' the prefect asked.

`No. How could they? He was crossing into Germany. The time was 1800 hours this evening…

`Crossing into Germany? You mean he had just left France? What the hell is he up to? According to Hugon he was coming into France!' Grelle walked across his office to study a wall map. 'He crosses the border into France and then drives straight back into Germany? It doesn't make sense, Boisseau.'

`Perhaps Hugon is not all that reliable…'

`He was reliable in telling us the Englishman had visited Lasalle. I just don't understand it.' Grelle began pacing backwards and forwards in front of the map, occasionally glancing at it. 'It's too much of a coincidence that he should cross over so close to Saarbrucken,' he decided. 'He must have gone back to see Lasalle. We'll have to wait for the next report from Hugon. I've no doubt he'll tell us that Lennox went back to see the colonel.'

`Shall we keep on the frontier alert?'

`Yes. Just in case he comes back again.'

The third member of the Soviet Commando was Antonin Lansky, the man they called the Rope. Twenty-eight years old, Lansky had already travelled abroad to track down two Czechs who defected from the political intelligence section in Bratislava. The two Czechs, a man and a girl, had fled across the border into Austria where they sought refuge in Vienna. Their disappearance-on a Friday night in the hope that they would have the weekend to get clear-was discovered by accident within a few hours. Lansky was sent after them.

The Austrian security service reacted too slowly. On arrival the Czech couple applied for political asylum and were temporarily housed in an apartment off the Karntnerstrasse, which was a mistake because the apartment had been used before and a security official from the Soviet Embassy watching the apartment saw them arrive. He informed Lansky the moment the Czech reached Vienna.

How Lansky talked his way inside the apartment was always a mystery, but it was known that he spoke fluent German. In the early evening of Sunday an official from the Austrian state security department arrived at the apartment to interrogate the Czech couple. Getting no reply to his repeated knocking, he called the caretaker who forced the locked door. They found the man and the girl in different rooms, both of them hanging from ropes. A note-scribbled in Czech-explained. 'We could no longer face the future…' From then on inside Czech state security circles Lansky was nicknamed the Rope.

Antonin Lansky was a thin, wiry man of medium height with a lean, bony face and well-shaped hands. Blond-haired, his most arresting feature was his eyes, large-pupilled eyes which moved with disconcerting slowness. Reserved by nature, he had spoken least during the training session at the racetrack outside Tabor, listening while Carel Vanek, ever ready to express himself on any subject, talked non-stop in the evenings before they went to bed. Even Vanek found the quiet, soft-spoken Lansky hard to understand; if a man won't join you in conversation you can't get a grip on him, bring him under your influence. 'You'll have to prattle on a bit more when we go into Germany,' Vanek told him one evening, 'otherwise you'll stand out like raw egg on a bed sheet. Frenchmen are always prattling…'

`That was not my observation when I was in Paris,' Lansky replied quietly. 'I often sat in bistros where the locals were playing piquet and they hardly spoke a word for hours.'

When I was in Paris… Subtly, Lansky had needled Vanek again. The older Czech disliked being reminded that Lansky had succeeded him in the security detachment with the Czech Embassy in Paris, that Lansky, too, knew something about France. The truth was that Antonin Lansky was deeply ambitious, that he looked forward to the day when he would replace a man like Vanek, whom he thought too volatile for the job of leader.

It was close to midnight on Tuesday, 14 December, when the Russian trainer, Borisov, burst into the concrete cabin where the three members of the Commando were getting ready for bed.

Lansky was already in his upper bunk, against the wall, while Vanek and Brunner, who had stayed up talking and smoking, were just starting to disrobe. Borisov came in with his coat covered with snow. For several days snow had been falling heavily east of a line between Berlin and Munich; now it had come to Tabor.

`You will be leaving for the west within forty-eight hours,' he announced. 'A signal has just arrived-everything is changed. Forget Lasalle-you have three other people on the list now-two in France and one in Germany…' He dropped a sheet of paper on the table which Vanek picked up as Brunner peered over his shoulder. 'And you have to complete the job by the night of 22 December,' he added.

`It's impossible,' was Brunner's immediate reaction. 'Not enough time for planning…'

`Difficult, yes, but not impossible,' Vanek commented as he took the list of names and addresses over to the wall map. `Strasbourg, Colmar and Freiburg are in roughly the same area-on opposite banks of the Rhine. We already have our different sets of French papers, we all speak French… In the background Borisov was watching closely, sure now that he had chosen the right man to lead the Commando: Vanek was adaptable in an emergency. 'I think as we're going into France,' Vanek went on, 'each of us should carry a Surete Nationale card-they have some in Kiev and if they get the lead out of their boots they should be able to fly them here by tomorrow night. And a set of French skeleton keys. Then we could leave on Thursday morning…'